17 and in AUC, 2003

18 March 2013

For 14 nights, 7–20 of April 2003, I sat in a soundproofed one-way mirrored glass room from 19–23 hrs drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and talking. Although people could see and hear me, I could not see or hear anyone except for myself. The glass room was constructed in an apartment rented in downtown Cairo using the budget offered by the Falaki Gallery at the American University in Cairo (AUC) who had invited me to exhibit. Over the span of these two weeks I only allowed myself to speak about my memories of my undergraduate years (between 1990 and 1995) at the AUC, to comment on and analyze these memories, as well as to address the actual context of the performance itself. The performance was documented on 56 mini DV tapes, each tape representing one hour. Every audible word was transcribed and the results were published in a book, 17 and in AUC— the transcriptions (2004) without any editing or punctuation. The book is organized by day and hour to mirror the structure of the performance and is available here for browsing and reading. A three-minute excerpt from the documentationtape of the second day is playing on the monitor.

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